Golden Delicious is increasingly sought out by apple enthusiasts for growing in home orchards as word spreads that hiding behind the bland reputation of the supermarket examples, this is an apple that truely merits its name.
Home-grown Golden Delicious is a very different proposition from the supermarket apples you may be used to. It is a very sweet apple of course, but the the sweetness is more like that of raw cane sugar than the bland sweetness you might be expecting. The trick is to pick the apples when they are fully ripe, at which point the familiar pale green skin turns to a green-gold hue.
Whilst the flavour will be better, home grown Golden Delicious still apples retain the advantages of commercially grown examples - versatile for eating fresh or using in the kitchen, and can be kept for several months in a cold shed or in the fridge.
**All prices include delivery (except certain fan-trained or espalier-trained trees). We offer a discount on orders of multiple bare-root trees for delivery at the same time - this will be shown at the checkout.
Fan-trained and Espalier trees: Prices of these trees do NOT include delivery as these require special delivery arrangements - click here for details.
Delivery period: Pot-grown trees can be delivered from September onwards. Bare-root trees can be delivered from mid-November onwards. Within those periods you can specify your preferred month of delivery during the checkout process. It is best to order as soon as you can to ensure items are reserved for you.
*Mature heights: Height shown is the approximate height of the tree when mature (after 5-10 years), not the height when supplied. See photos of trees as supplied. Actual mature heights may vary considerably dependent on your local conditions and training and pruning regime.
Stock availability: Items showing as 'sold out' will probably be available again next season. If you would like to reserve in advance use our enquiry form - this does not commit you to anything.
Golden Delicious is partially self-fertile, but fruiting will be improved if there is a compatible tree of a different variety nearby.
Our online pollination checker lists suitable pollination partners for this variety.
More advice about pollination.
Golden Delicious is easy to grow, and very productive across a wide range of climates. In the UK Golden Delicious does best in the south and east as it prefers a drier climate and a warm autumn helps.
Golden Delicious is usually a good pollinator for other apple varieties, particularly traditional English varieties such as Cox, because it flowers over a long period in the mid-season as is not closely related to them.
Planting instructions.
Pruning instructions.
West Virginia, USA 1890s. Golden Delicious is almost certainly a seedling of an old Amercian variety called Grimes Golden. The original tree survived until the 1950s, by which time the variety was firmly established as one of the most widely-planted of all apples.
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